It’s shocking but not surprising that distracted driving deaths have increased almost 20% since last year, according to the Ontario Provincial Police. Each of us sees examples of bad behaviour almost every day.

Despite all the warnings and evidence of risk, thousands of people still look at their phones while they’re driving a heavy and potentially deadly piece of machinery at over a hundred kilometres per hour. You’d think the threat to their own lives would be enough to cause people to put their phones down, let alone the risk that they kill another driver or pedestrian. But people just can’t resist the urge to see a text message within seconds of it arriving.

More serious punishments haven’t been much of a deterrent so the only solution to this lunacy and carnage, it seems, is technology. Once the mechanisms are complete, car manufacturers should be required to install devices that disable phones in the driver’s seat. After that, we can all look forward to driverless cars, when people will be able to text as much as they want without an LOL or an OMG killing another person.

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